2,000 years
by stilljustme
Summary: The ashes have fallen. In the land of the dead, Cassia reflects the last days of her life.


_The lyrics are from **Missy Higgins' "They weren't there".** I heard this song sung by a girl from our music class… and at least for me, it fit perfectly to Cassia. _

So there are gods after all.  
I know it. I know my gods are real, and Milo's as well, and they fight for their believers, because when I woke up, I was alone. Alone in a place so similar to the one I'd just been in that for a moment I could imagine it had all been dream, and that I could wake up now.

The mountain calm, my city excited with life. My parents standing next to me, keeping me safe like… like they hadn't when I returned home for the last time.  
It was then that I realized, maybe for the first time, that it was neither the Vesuvius nor Milo that had my world crashed. It had already begun before the mountain roared, and no gladiator would have been able to save me… if there had been any salvation in this life.

_You breathed infinity into my world  
And time was lost up in a cloud and in a whirl. _

I searched for Milo, maybe days, maybe years in the grey twilight that, like me, didn't belong to the world above. Was it the ashes of the dead who hadn't found their body's shape again? Was it him all around me? But why should I have been blessed to find myself again in Hades' realm, and Milo sentenced to keep whirling around?  
In a world that didn't exist anymore. In my heart that had stopped beating.

_We dug a hole in the cool grey earth and lay there for the night.  
Then you said, "wait for me we'll fly the wind,_

I know he died because he breathed his soul into me, and mine, too weak to pass through my burnt tongue and lips, embraced it. This was not what either of us had planned before, not what our fate should have been, and though centuries have passed I sometimes keep myself asking if Corvus could have saved me. If the future I was so afraid of would have been better than having no future at all… if I would ever have found in another man what I found in Milo without even looking for it.  
Safety. Freedom. The knowledge that my words would be heard and considered. Love, not eternal probably, but now, and what did we have but one moment?  
Life. Death. Together.

_We'll grow old and you'll be stronger without him" but oh,  
Now my world is at your feet._

Where is our growing old? I am not sure if we would have lasted as long as my grandparents did, dying in the same night with their hair grown white and their bodies so frail that it wasn't a fight anymore. I am not sure if we could have had the strength to rebuild Pompeii, but why didn't the gods let us try?  
I lost my home the moment Corvus' shadows reached for it, taking my city before he could take me.  
Often I've asked if he could have saved my life, and every time but once the answer has been no.  
Years went by and I was alone, decades till I found my parents again in the world of death. Centuries to see Aridane again, who gave and lost her life for me.  
And not a sign, though I've been looking for it everywhere, and will not cease to do it, of Milo.

_I was lost and I was found,_

I followed him into death because I wanted to be with him. I do not regret a moment of our time, in face of death and pain and loneliness, I do not regret anything. Before the mountain flooded my body with fire, desperation had my heart flooded and drowning. To save my city my parents had been ready so sell me. To save them I agreed to be sold.  
Milo saved me from the future I was dreading, and how could I be anything than thankful for this?

_But I was alive and now I've drowned._

A thousand years have gone by, and another thousand almost… years whirling through the darkness like the ashes of our brothers and sisters in our hair, before we joined them, mingled with them… together.

_So now I will be waiting for the world to hear my song  
So they can tell me I was wrong... _

Two thousand years almost and still I hear the people asking for my fate, for the fate of my city, I hear them wondering how we lived and died, I hear them lamenting me for the cruel death I suffered, for the lives our children could have lived, for all the power and wealth of Pompeii buried so sudden.  
Sometimes I hear them telling my story, and wondering how a girl like me could have fallen for a gladiator. How a girl from their own society could find love and peace with a poor man… how it can be more desirable to die together than live alone.  
I do live alone now, most of the times, I am still searching for the one soul that could have made me whole. Maybe. Who knows?  
They don't, but they keep judging me, by the fact that I, in my rich clothes, lie so close to a warrior beneath our blanket of ashes.  
Sometimes they wonder if I was just a victim, and Milo a fool who used his last moments on earth trying to rape me.

_But they weren't there beneath your stare,  
And they weren't stripped 'till they were bare of  
Any bindings from the world outside that room.  
And they weren't taken by the hand  
And led through fields of naked land  
Where any pre-conceived ideas were blown away...  
So I couldn't say "no"._

I wish I could tell them my truth, how I lost everything I had thought to know and love, how my life was turned before I knew it would end. How a man who hated me as a part of the Roman Empire came to love me for who I was, and with that gave me back to myself.  
How I wanted to live with Milo, how I wanted to run and was determined not to give up… how it were only seconds to decide, and how I clung to the person who gave me peace and security when fear and death was all around me.  
I want them to know that at first I was running, like they would, trying to survive.  
I want them to know I didn't lay down and die because I was too weak, or too consumed with fear.

I want them to know that in that last moment I chose my fate, and I chose my death, and it was my decision alone. I died as a citizen of Pompeii, and I died as a woman being loved, and loving, and in that moment there was nothing else I could have wished for.  
He gave me back my life, and though it didn't last for long, it was mine. Mine to live, mine to give back and go aflame.

If I had the chance to go back… I couldn't say "no" to any of it.  
My life, my death.  
Milo.

I wouldn't say no.


End file.
